The 'Bengal Renaissance' is the glimmering phase of the mid 19th cent.

when the cultural flamboyancy and religious revivalism had created consternation in the province of Bengal.Keeping the model of 'European Renaissance' aside,if we just look at the 'Bengal Awakening' as a separate event then its main facets could be brought under review.It is said to have begun with Raja Rammohun Roy (1775-1833) who is deemed to be the 'herald' of Bengal Renaissance and continued until the death of Rabindranath Tagore in 1941.The Renaissance was a revival of the positives of ancient past and appreciation of the western elements.Thus, the Bengal Renaissance blended the teachings of upanishads to create hindu public opinion against social evils and the western education and politics.In short, there was a symbiosis of orient elements as well as ideas borrowed from occident land.

Etymologically, the word renaissance (Rinascimento in Itlalian) means re-birth or revitalism.The term was coined by Jacob Bruckhardt in the context of the Italian Renaissance of the late 14th or early 15th cent.The Italian Renaissance, in short, saw the melange of the pagan old and the new of the emerging Europe.In the same way the Bengal Renaissance retained the positives of the ancient past and welcomed novel ideas in the domain of science and politics.But to what extent it is feasible to compare European Renaissance with the Bengal case is a moot point. In the mid 19th cent. Bengal had witnessed an intellectual awakening that deserves to be called "Renaissance" in european style.The new intellectual avalanche of European knowledge particularly history, philosophy, literature and science through the medium of education in english may be said to have affected the contemporary mind and life

very radically.Rammohun Roy was the morning star of the Bengal renaissance.His contribution towards social and cultural sphere was colossal. Sophia Dolson Collet lauds him as"the bridge over which India marches from her unmeasured past to her incalculable future".Subsequently,the notorious band of Henry louis vivian derozio came up with an iconoclast disposition.His radical disciples Debendranath Tagore and his followers Akshay Kumar Dutta,Ishwar chandra vidyasagar, Michael Madhusudan Dutta, Bankim chandra chattophadhyaya, Swami vivekananda were the prominent figures of Bengal Renaissance of the 19th and early 20th cent. This period saw innumerable new stars rising high in the eastern firmament.'west' profoundly impacted the eastern people, particularly the elite intelligentsia centering around the Calcutta metropolis.In response to the western notions of rationalism,liberalism the prominent Bengalees like Rammohun Roy, Ishwar chandra Vidyasagar endeavored to raise the 'fallen' bengal society from the garb of darkness.Rammohun Roy attempted to provide respite to the sati victims that had tortured them to death.Ishwar chandra vidyasagar worked strenuously to irradicate another abusive custom i;e child marriage.These two corrupt practises were jeopardising women's life.Some attempts were made to abandon these social evils. However,these reformers were entraped in their own prejudices and conservatisms.On top of that they feared to invert the orthodox,casteridden and superstitious hindu society.So, this is the limit of the social reformers who aimed to recover the hindu society from the slumber of darkness.Another radical reformer was Henry Louis Vivian Derozio, an Eurasian professor of english and history at Hindu college.His followers were known for notoriety and radical temperament.Under his tutelage,students were encouraged to debate freely and question authority.He upheld the motto: He who will not reason is a bigot; he who cannot is a fool, & he who does not is a slave".In the year 1830 the orthodox society was taken aback when the Derozians recited illiad instead of slokas and mantras.They even greeted goddess kali as 'good morning, madam'.The only positive aspect of this 'young Bengal' team was that rationalism and a candid appreciation of ideas generating from the west. Along with Derozio, David Hare devoted his life to reform as well as the furtherance of

modern education in his adopted country, Bengal. He was the virtual founder of the Hindu College of 1817 & militated against Press Regulations (1835) & the export of coolies to Mauritius (1838). He also pressed for the extension of the jury system (1835). Coming to the cultural realm,there was a cascade of literary flow in bengali language, restoration of ancient classics and sacred text books like -- vedas and upanishads.Bengali Literature in the years, 1856-61 was in the first throes of creative activity.Its said to have included four phases (roughly from 1800 to 56) viz., The Fort William Phase (1801 to 1815), Rammohun Roy phase (1815 to 31), the "young Bengal" and Sambad Prabhakar phase (1831 to 1843) and lastly, the Vidyasagar and Tatwabodhini patrika phase (1843 to 1856). The renaissance period after the Indian Rebellion of 1857 saw a magnificient outburst of bengali literature.According to Nitish Sengupta (History of Bengali-speaking People,pg 253) Rammohun Roy and Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar were the pioneers, while Bankim Chandra Chattopadhayaya widened the literary path. The first significant nationalist detour to the Bengal Renaissance was given by the brilliant writings of Bankim Chandra Chatterjee.According to Gopal Haldar (Bengali literature before and after 1857 pg-279-91) (Rebellion 1857 edited by P.C Joshi) patriotism was a staple food fo Bengali Literature even before 1850 and Todd's Annals of Rajasthan fired bengali imagination.Bankim chandra's Ananda Math ,published in the year 1882 and Hemchandra Bandhyapadhyaya's Bharat Sangit (1870) provoked nationalist sentiment.Bengali prose developed during this enlightened phase.Raj Narayan Bose in the Tatwabodhini Patrika of 1856 referred to three elegant writers :Ishwar chandra Vidyasar, Akshay Kumar Dutta and Rajendra Lal Mitra who took Bengali literature to a certain height.Bengali poetry rose to a new cusp with the writings of Michael Madhusudan Dutta's'Meghnad Badh Kavya'. Bengali Stage drama under the impact of Russian dramatist Gerasim Lebedeff had its first modern initiation as early as 1795.Adaptions of sanskrit and even Shakespeare plays were being made all along.The writing of Ram Narayan Tarkaranath (kulin -kula-sarvasa) in the year 1854 marked the birth of new Bengali drama as an instrument of social

reforms.It was staged at nutan bazar in calcutta during the restive 1857.Bengali stage had also reached its zenith in 1856 when kali prasanna sinha's jorasanko house stage came into being.The domain of drama witnessed a new lease of life with the appearence of Dinabandhu Mitra's Nil-Darpan and Madhusudan Dutta's english translation of the drama Ratna-bali.Moreover, he took to writing bengali dramas. Bengali journals and newspapers was already in a force. Sambad prabhakar and Soma-Prakas are important examples.The press was the nursey of the new-born literary aspirants.But the only paradox is the press, be it english or bengali condemned the sepoy mutiny as 'superstition-ridden'. Quite many Bengali Novels began to accelerate the pace of Bengali literature.Tek-chand's Alaler gharer Dulal and Bankim's Ananda Math created a consternation in Bengali.The prominent Bengali writers had written truly in a high patriotic colour.Their vivid nationalist sentiment and humanism were quite apparent in their writings.Deep sorrow, desparation and abyssmal hatred against the english rule were quite visible in their writings.The bengali literature, doubtless set a new paradigm in the sphere of culture.The bengali writings show how the colonial people bore the brunt of heavy pains and tragedy.

According to Kathleen M o' connell (Rabindranath Tagore on Education) the Tagore family became the paladin of Renaissance and had a particualr interest on education.Their contribution to Renaissance was multi-faceted.Infact, Tagore's 1901 Bengali novella 'Nashtanir' was written as a critique of a man professing the enlightened ideas of renaissance but not implementing in his own life.In many ways, Rabindranath's writings like poems and songs were imbued with the spirits of the Upanishads.His writings repeatedly allude to the upanishadic ideas of soul, liberation and trans-migration.The nobleprize wining book Gitanjali bears testimony to the fact. The Bengal renaissance saw the emergence of pioneering Bengali scientists like--Jagadish chandra Bose,Satyendra Nath Bose, Meghnad Saha, P.C Ray.So this period was fertile so far as science and technology is concerned.According to A.k Sen "sir J.C Bose and radio

science, microwave symposium digest 2(8-13 pgs),J.c bose was a polymath who contibuted towards physics, chemistry,technology-based subjects and archaeology.He is one of the fathers of radio science and is also considered the author of bengali science fictions.He was the first from the indian sub-continent to get a US patent in 1904.Satyendranath Bose was a physict and specialised in mathematical physics.He is best known for his works on quantum mechanics in 1920s, providing the foundation for Bose-Einstein statistics and the theory of Bose-Einstein condensate.Upendranath Brahmachari was a noted Indian scientist and an able medical practitioner.Meghnad Saha was an well known astro-physict, who founded the saha equation that explained the physical and chemical condition in the star.He was nominated four times for Noble Prize. P.C Ray was a noted chemist who founded the Bengal Chemical and Pharmaceuticals in 1905.If compared with European Scientists and physicians like Copernicus,Kepler, Galileo, Newton, Galen then Bengal's scientists works were not so highly remarkable.But is it justifiable to belittle their works? In the domain of art , the painters came out of the medieval tradition,they developed a distinctive style.Nature's inspiration and discoveries emerged as the new genre of painting during the entire phase of Bengal Renaissance.Abanindanath Tagore was the herald of the movement, while he was accompanied by Gajendranath Tagore, Durgasunkar Bhattacharya and Nandalal Bose.They took inspiration from the mughal, rajput and ajanta paintings.The Bengal School of Painting and Academy of Fine Arts became the new institutes of art and exhibition.Although it was nothing, if compared with Italian renaissance art which was a broad subject and took the art to the cusp of glory, but the bengal painters gave the indegenous art a new meaning.There was no architectural splendour during this time Bengal as we find in Europe. In the sphere of religion,Rammohun Roy endeavored to reform hinduism by going back to its purist forms as enshrined in the vedic texts.The western idelogies like christian unitarianism and trinitarians profoundly influenced his career.Roy condemned idoltry,polytheism and priest-crafts.His new notions about religion culminated in the foundation of the Brahmo Samaj in the 19th cent.,essentially based on monotheism.His followers were Debendranath Tagore, Radhakanta Deb

and others who embraced Brahmo religion.Another man of great stature, Swami vivekananda in the world parliament of Religion in 1893 in Chicago popularised Hinduism and took it to an international level.Thus, the Renaissance saw religious and cultural accomplishments. Now the crux of the matter whether there was Renaissance in Bengal or not.In this context, Soumyajit Samanta, (Critique of Bengal Renaissance, 23rd European conference,Manchester, panel 9-Bengal Studies) says, that the Bengal Renaissance was flawed from the outset.It not only failed to involve regeneration of ancient literature and institutions but the educated community of Bengal hyped only the immediate benefits of the English education overlooking the exploiting character of the english.According to Samanta, the protagonists of Renaissance failed to comprehend the needs of the toiling masses who lived in the nether land with their obsessive hindu rituals and traditions and the handicaps of the muslim citizens.So the intellectualism of the urban elites was limited to the cosmpolitian calcutta. However, as Samanta says, the main critique of Bengal Renaissance lies elsewhere.The colonial rule let loose political and economic forces which led to the birth of middle class bourgeoisie.The ideology of the west directly or indirectly led to the growth of nationalism.Rammohun Roy and Dwarkanath Tagore were aware of the economic exploitation of the english. But they understood that it was not expedient to resist the economic revolution which would later become beneficial for a transitiion from medievalism to modern. Benoy Ghosh says that three factors were responsible for Renaissance.i.e, cultural growth, good economic situation and free capitalism.Cultural growth was quite prevailing.But the economic situation was declining.Almost all enterprises were debasing.In 1906 we find the mention of Jamshedji's Tata venture that was just rising.Other than that as compared to Medicci merchants and bankers of Florence we didn't find any good example of free capitalism. K.N Panikkar "colonialism,culture and Resistance", OUP, 2007,chap.8 ,'what happened to the renaissance in India' says , that the renaissance had two aspects .) eulogistic and .) denunciatory The earlier writers like Keshori Chand Mitra said that renaissance was a beginning of new morning . kanchanjunga received the first ray of light

while the rest was still in darkness.Aurobindo ghosh and Jadunath Sarkar also belonged to this class of eulogist.They described Renaissance as the harbinger of new age. While the denunciatory group received an international audience.They applied the criticism of orientalism.Whatever happened remained confined to the colonial society and that also a definite class of intellectuals who could be seen a kind of helpless victims unknowing of their helplessness.Lasly some scholars like Dipesh chakroborty and sumit sarkar argue that not all of the Renaissance is futile.Print culture and clock-time are the remarkable features of the 19th cent. Renaissance.Dipesh Chakraborty 'provincialising Europe, Birth of a new subject' says that birth of a personality occured during this time.People became aware of their strenght and defects.Dipesh stands in between the two.Rajat Ray in says that compassion is a newer concept.it is akin to humanism, secularism, mindfulness,condemning all the rituals of the texts.That is the lasting effect of renaissance. It was from the late 1940s that some marxist historians began to analyse "Bengal Renaissance" from a new point of view.According to Rabindra Gupta, a Pseudonym for an eminent communist leader in 1949 said that the historical process enlivened by Rammohun Roy, Bankim and Rabindranath Tagore was not a progressive one.They had invited western intrusion.But other marxist historians discarded the theory of Rabindra gupta. According to Sushovan Sarkar (Bengal Renaissance and other essays, 1970) the Renaissance had two streams:the western stream and the revivalist stream.He says, in the history of Bengal Renaissance, the contribution of westernism was higher than that of traditionalism.Amalesh Triparthi says that the Bengal Renaissance lay dormant in tradition.According to Sumit Sarkar Bengal Renaissance is vaguely an imitation of the west.According to Narahari Kaviraj,vidyasagar was modern in approach but had a respect for traditional values.Bankim chandra and vivekananda were in favour of revivalist stream,but they were not against modernity.But the best synthesis of tradition and modernity was found in Rabindranath Tagore.This theory has been emphasised by sushil jana in "rabindranather drishtite nabajagaran". In Mapping Subaltern studies and post-colonial etd by Vinayak

Chaturvedi we find the marxist readings of "Bengal Renaissance". Long heralded as the begining of new era, the marxist reinterpretations stressed the failure of the project.Scholars like Sumit Sarkar, Barun De contended that in absence of organic class to serve as its basis, the reformers could not but fail in their project.In short, the bengal renaissance represents the case of aborted or colonial modernity. Speaking in a nutshell , scholars still writhe and roll in the dungeon of darkness regarding the debate of Bengal Renaissance which is not yet resolved.Bengal in the mid 19th cent. witnessed a new wave of change in socio-cultural and religious spheres. Be it European Renaissance or Bengal the concept 'renaissance' is something very elusive,extremely difficult to circumscribe or define accurately.It is a baffling problem to define "renaissance" correctly.Another question is raised frequently, is it feasible to compare eurpean renaissance with the bengal case? Now the answer is, European renaissance is sometimes seen as the 'father of renaissance', something that had happened in 15th or 16th cent . Moreover,it occured under different circumstances and something that had incepted in Italy and was not limited affair but more far-flung. But the bengal renaissance remained confined to a definite literary class encompassed around the calcutta metropolis. So, Bengal Renaissance found its niche among Calcuttan elites, more suitably casted a high impact on educated middle-class intelligentsia.It, doubtless,dawned a brilliant phase of cultural efflorescence and there was a cascade of literary flow particularly in Bengali and of course, germination of impeccable scientific thought.